A system has been proposed in the United States and endorsed by the U.S. Congress commonly known as the V-Chip System. The system involves using the vertical blanking interval (“VBI”) of a standard television signal to include a code which indicates one or more rating factors for the program then being aired. These rating factors can include ratings similar to those promulgated by the Motion Picture Association of America (e.g. G, PG, PG-13, R, NC-17) and numerical ratings of individual categories of program nature such as violence, language, nudity and sexual content. A consumer V-Chip television system would allow a consumer to program his or her television system to exclude programs according to their preferred levels of one or more of these rating criteria or alternatively could be programmed to permit only programs having certain levels of content according to these rating categories.
A problem with the V-Chip system, as recognized in an article by T. Atherton, entitled “Living With the V-Chip,” The Ottawa Citizen, Entertainment, Section F, pp. F1-F2 (Saturday, Mar. 9, 1996), is that the perceived utility of the V-Chip system to a consumer depends on whether the consumer agrees with the subjective ratings contained in the VBI for most, if not all, programs. The author of this article, who purportedly has been involved in a “Beta-test” of the V-Chip system in Canada, gives two illustrative examples in his article. First, “trash-talk” shows are rated at the lowest possible level for violence and the next lowest level for language and sex categories, even though these shows often contain verbal violence, physical confrontations and graphic verbal sexual discussions. Second, utilizing the overall rating system to exclude this type of program, such as excluding all programs with a rating above PG, results in the blocking out of many programs which the author considers appropriate for viewing and does not wish blocked out, such as the movie Forrest Gump.
Although some people may disagree with the author's judgment of the relative harm and worth of particular television programs, the article illustrates, at least, that regardless of how much the ratings providers will be able to adjust and fine tune their ratings system, based upon the majority of consumers' wishes, there will remain a significant portion of the consumer public who will disagree with the rating systems and think that whatever exclusion programming they do will block out desirable programs while not blocking out undesirable programs.
Another problem with the existing parental control systems is that the users (parents) have to re-enter a password every time they block/unblock a program or invoke a related function. This is time consuming and will quickly become annoying as well. Yet Another problem with the parental control systems using passwords is that the users (parents) forget the password. This may lead to service calls to equipment manufacturer, adding to the cost of support. Accordingly, an improvement on the V-Chip system access control is needed.